Monthly Archives: April 2017

These days, the burden of book promotion rests squarely on the author, especially indie authors, but even traditionally published authors have to pull their weight to sell books. If a bookstore agrees to stock your book and put it on their shelves, what’s next? How does a bookstore go about letting their customers know that…

These days, the burden of book promotion rests squarely on the author, especially indie authors, but even traditionally published authors have to pull their weight to sell books.

If a bookstore agrees to stock your book and put it on their shelves, what’s next? How does a bookstore go about letting

their customers know that your book is there? How to they promote it?

Well—they don’t. You’ll need to be the one to step up your book promotion game.

I’m afraid that once a bookstore stocks your book on their shelves that is about it. Then it is up to us authors and publishers to drive readers INTO the store, UP TO the shelf, OVER to the cash register, and OUT the door.

But don’t despair (you’ve managed to get your book onto that competitive real estate, so the battle is half-won). There are lots of ways you can work with bookstores and bookstore employees to promote your book while it is there.

It seems Amazon is pitching its “subscribe with Amazon” service to publishers today. “It’s not an app store, or an in-app purchase API,” Amazon said in its notice to account holders.

“Subscribe with Amazon is the only app monetization solution that is OS, device, and platform agnostic, providing your subscribers the freedom to buy once and access on any iOS or Android supported device. It also enables you to expand your reach far beyond the app store by making your offering purchasable across Amazon’s many shopping channels.”

Earlier this month at the 12th annual Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) conference, the evolution of the ebook and its place in the library and scholarly community was an undeniable sub-theme – one that left me thinking any revolutionary vision for ebooks has been greatly stymied by disconnects between end-user perspectives and the agendas of scholarly resource suppliers.

More than a dozen sessions focused on ebooks during the three-day event. Whether addressing acquisitions, platforms, analytics, standards, or marketing, the overwhelming take-away was: Digital book evolution in academia and research turns out to be much harder than it seems. Librarians and publishers alike are fretting over low usage and uneven user uptake of diverse, ever-changing digital book products. This is leading us to a clear inflection point in the scholarly ebook evolution, with less urgency to launch the latest app or widget, and more willingness to slow down and listen to what’s actually helpful to readers in the digitization and reinvention of academic books.

Libraries are navigating administrative pressures to reduce print holdings and move to digital resources – options for which include a great deal of variation in business models, license terms, and interface designs, not to mention options that successfully integrate with local discovery and cataloging systems. Publishers continue to experiment with pricing and product models for ebooks that retain or exceed their print siblings. All the while, faculty and students demonstrate even greater multiplicity in their expectations and preferences for digital books.

How to Create a Speaker One-Sheet

The beauty of being a writer is the diversity of opportunities it presents. Many writers and authors teach workshops, offer editing services, mentor or coach other writers, meet readers at book signings and book fairs, and speak. If your first reaction to speaking isn’t “YIKES,” you need a speaker one-sheet to attract and convince event organizers to hire you.

A speaker one-sheet is a two-page (one sheet) advertisement of your personality, speaking topics, and benefits to the audience. It’s one of the best marketing assets in your toolbox to get in front of decision-makers charged with finding engaging, relevant speakers for their event. Your job is to convince them that you are the one they should, no, NEED to hire.

We’ve added a new media section to your WordPress.com dashboard, allowing you to bulk upload, edit, and tweak your media files. Let’s look at the changes:

Upload Media in Bulk

Add new items in bulk by going to Media → Add New to activate the file picker. You can also drag and drop items right onto the page.

Edit Media

Now you can edit media files as you add them to your post or directly from the media section. To modify media information like the title or caption, select the items you would like to edit, then click Edit.

In the details view, you can update the title, caption, and description. Any changes made in these fields will be saved automatically for you.

Edit Photos

If you have a photo that needs to be cropped or rotated you can now update this here, too! From the media detail view…

This week’s ProBloggerPLUS is a little late because I found myself in every blogger’s worst nightmare this week – we went away for a few days break where I expected to work in the evenings and…. we were in a dead spot for mobile phone connectivity and I couldn’t get online!

I’m happy to report I survived and the resulting few days away was even more relaxing than I intended!

Darren

Event Reminder: The early bird offers for this year’s ProBlogger events end in the next few days for our Australian Events and at the end of the month for our US event.

I’m regularly asked about whether I’d recommend having two blogs or if it’s better to just focus upon one. I’ve managed to juggle two myself but while there are certainly benefits there are some risks and costs too. In this episode and transcript I share the pros and cons as well as a few tips on how to do more than one (if you choose that path).Read the Full Post

Recently, Google’s ‘Fred’ ranking update hit the search pages. While Google hasn’t confirmed the update, it’s certainly live. Here’s our post on what Fred is, it’s impact, who is affected and what to do if you’ve been hit.Read the Full Post

If you are building your email list as a way to help grow your blog and business you’ll want to read this post from Jawad who shares 3 list building techniques that you’ll see many smart marketers use in the coming months.Read the Full Post

Most bloggers I talk to ask for tips on how to be more productive in their work. In this post Nicole Avery (the planning queen) shares 5 simple steps to a more productive blogging experience by mastering a strategy that most productive bloggers use – the to do list.Read the Full Post

If SEO is important to you then understanding HTTP codes and redirects are very important. It all sounds a little geeky but if you put this in the to hard basket you could well be hurting your search engine results and rankings.Read the Full Post

If you consider yourself to be a ‘social entrepreneur’ then you’ll find this article by James Aschehoug to be useful. In it he shares his top 5 blogging tips. This is good solid advice – particularly useful to those starting out.Read the Full Post

The average self-published book sells 250 copies in its first year and maybe 1,000 copies in its lifetime. Most authors are ecstatic if they hit 1,000 copies in the first three months. But what if you sold 1,000 copies of your book on the first day it released?

Now, there is no such thing as an overnight success. Work that lasts and resonates with your audience requires consistent effort over an extended period of time.

Without a platform, without an email list, and without a community, you could not self-publish a book tomorrow and reasonably expect anything but dead air in response.

However, if you put in the effort, do your research, and engage with influencers and your target audience to build a loyal tribe, the sky really is the limit.

This week’s guest on The Portfolio Life, successfully self-published a book and sold over 1,000 copies on the first day it released. Within a week he was connected with seven traditional publishers, landed a book contract soon thereafter, and has just launched Quarter-Life Calling.

Listen in as Paul Sohn and I talk about how to decide whether to self-publish or pursue a book contract with a traditional publisher, realizing the emptiness of a “dream job” at a young age, and redefining what it means to achieve success

If you do not promote your blog or web, how will someone know about your great content? Driving traffic to your blog is as essential to your success as your own writing.

Take the opportunity to cross the promotion of your blog on Twitter. Making tweets about your blog can be an incredible way to reach out and connect with your consumer. With over 500 million users, you can find plenty of new readers through Twitter as well. If you use this social network well, you can drive tons of traffic to your blog. But simply typing the title of your post with a link to your site will not work.

You have to be proactive. You have to be creative. In this one minute marketing, we will see fast and straightforward tactics that you can apply on Twitter to drive traffic to your website

In a recent online discussion, an author observed that when you write books on different topics, each with its own audience, it’s hard to build up a fan base.

She’s right.

She was referring to nonfiction, but many novelists have this problem, too. They write books in multiple genres and have to start from scratch with the marketing when they move into a new category. For example, they might write a science fiction book, then shift to poetry before moving on to steampunk.

This is a common situation. These writers follow their muse or interests. They’re not interested in focusing on one topic, genre, or audience. They write what they want to write about.

Fair enough.

But they’re often the people who complain the loudest that their book sales aren’t what they think they should be.